Not #BlueMonday in #JaneEyre

Poor Monday, nobody seems to like you, and apparently today is the worst Monday of the year, the third Monday of January.

Don’t despair. I have three great reads to liven your Monday:

1- I found this article on Twitter this morning thanks to @Taragreaves who posted this fabulous article called Stop Chasing and Start Living, by Lindsey Miles @treadmyownpath  These lines are especially enlightening:

‘Research shows the three main things that make people happy are close relationships, a pastime they love and helping others.’

I couldn’t agree more. They should be our mantra for every single day of our lives.

2- Just in case you are feeling blue today, here’s an article in today’s press to liven your day. You’ll find out all about ‘Blue Monday’ and how to get to ‘Thank God it’s Tuesday!’

3- Number three is my favourite.

Monday might be the least liked day of the year, but did you know it was the day Mr. Rochester called Jane across the Moors, and she actually heard him and returned to the Rochester Estate to find him!

She discovered Thornfield had been burnt down, and Mr. Rochester a sick and brooding widow at his Manor House, Ferndean.

It’s definitely one of the romantic highlights of the novel. Here it is for your pleasure, Mr. Rochester is speaking to Jane who has just arrived unexpectedly on his doorstep:

‘Some days since: nay, I can number them—four; it was last Monday night, a singular mood came over me: one in which grief replaced frenzy—sorrow, sullenness. I had long had the impression that since I could nowhere find you, you must be dead. Late that night— perhaps it might be between eleven and twelve o’clock—ere I retired to my dreary rest, I supplicated God, that, if it seemed good to Him, I might soon be taken from this life, and admitted to that world to come, where there was still hope of rejoining Jane.

‘I was in my own room, and sitting by the window, which was open: it soothed me to feel the balmy night-air; though I could see no stars and only by a vague, luminous haze, knew the presence of a moon. I longed for thee, Janet! Oh, I longed for thee both with soul and flesh! I asked of God, at once in anguish and humility, if I had not been long enough desolate, afflicted, tormented; and might not soon taste bliss and peace once more. That I merited all I endured, I acknowledged—that I could scarcely endure more, I pleaded; and the alpha and omega of my heart’s wishes broke involuntarily from my lips in the words—’Jane! Jane! Jane!’’

‘Did you speak these words aloud?’ 

‘I did, Jane. If any listener had heard me, he would have thought me mad: I pronounced them with such frantic energy.’

‘And it was last Monday night, somewhere near midnight?’

‘Yes; but the time is of no consequence: what followed is the strange point. You will think me superstitious,— some superstition I have in my blood, and always had: nevertheless, this is true— true at least it is that I heard what I now relate.

‘As I exclaimed ‘Jane! Jane! Jane!’ a voice—I cannot tell whence the voice came, but I know whose voice it was— replied, ‘I am coming: wait for me;’ and a moment after, went whispering on the wind the words—’Where are you?’

‘I’ll tell you, if I can, the idea, the picture these words opened to my mind: yet it is difficult to express what I want to express. Ferndean is buried, as you see, in a heavy wood, where sound falls dull, and dies unreverberating.

‘Where are you?’ seemed spoken amongst mountains; for I heard a hill-sent echo repeat the words. Cooler and fresher at the moment the gale seemed to visit my brow: I could have deemed that in some wild, lone scene, I and Jane were meeting. In spirit, I believe we must have met. You no doubt were, at that hour, in unconscious sleep, Jane: perhaps your soul wandered from its cell to comfort mine; for those were your accentsas certain as I live—they were yours!’

Reader, it was on Monday night—near midnight—that I too had received the mysterious summons: those were the very words by which I replied to it. I listened to Mr. Rochester’s narrative, but made no disclosure in return. The coincidence struck me as too awful and inexplicable to be communicated or discussed. If I told anything, my tale would be such as must necessarily make a profound impression on the mind of my hearer: and that mind, yet from its sufferings too prone to gloom, needed not the deeper shade of the supernatural. I kept these things then, and pondered them in my heart.

Here’s a dramatic rendering of the events:

Have a Happy Monday!